Philip D. Morgan Slave Counterpoint

Although not focused exclusively on female enslavement, Philip D. Morgan’s Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake & Lowcountry echoes the contrasting identities between white and black Americans and its impact on the moral development of society. According to Morgan, “Slavery was not curious abnormality, no aberration, no marginal features or early America. Most eighteenth-century Americans did not find it an embarrassment or an evil. Rather, slavery was a fundamental, acceptable, thoroughly American institution.” Chattel slavery developed a societal structure that defined race and class throughout the Americas. The stark contrast between Anglo-Americans and African slaves began in the late 17th century when larger numbers of slaves were brought from Africa to the new world. The were “frightened Africans” and were not “Christians,” and their foreignness soon led to the creation of racial differentiations in society …show more content…
Morgan examine the interconnectivity between white identities and the treatment and perception of slavery in America. Anglo-Americans promoted their moral and sexual identities in contrast with the perceived immorality and inhuman nature of African slaves. Whether they disregarded the idea of morality as in the case of Sally Hemings, demonized slave women as temptresses and Jezebel, or as property of be traded and controlled in the case Morgan’s encyclopedic study of slavery in the Chesapeake and Low country, white Americans found their place in society through the subjugation and subordination of their slaves. By examining these systems, each other highlights a different facet and scope of the larger study of racial history in American and show the complexity that continues to shape the prospections of race and class that shapes not only the historical narrative but the ongoing struggle of racism and identity